Almost everything you need to know to start with Microsoft Loop

Summary

Microsoft Loop is a versatile tool designed to solve common workplace inefficiencies, such as brainstorming and meeting management. It's a flexible canvas with components and workspaces that integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and more, allowing teams to collaborate, plan, and create with ease. This video by Microsoft Community Learning demonstrates Loop’s features, including setting up workspaces, using collaborative components within popular Microsoft apps, and integrating with tools like Jira, Trello, and Figma to streamline project management. The demonstration also covers how to share and edit collaborative components directly within emails, making Loop a comprehensive tool for project management across various platforms.

Highlights

• Loop addresses common meeting inefficiencies by providing a collaborative and flexible workspace ✨.
• Components and workspaces allow teams to integrate projects within their existing tools like Teams and Outlook 📧.
• Live demo showcases Loop's integration with apps like Jira, Trello, and Figma for enhanced project management ➕.
• The ability to share and edit Loop components directly from emails simplifies collaboration and editing 📩.
• Loop's versatile canvas supports decision-making processes and project tracking in an intuitive digital space 🏗️.

Key Takeaways

• Loop is a flexible canvas with portable components designed for seamless collaboration 🎨.
• Integrates smoothly with Microsoft apps like Teams, Outlook, Word, and more for efficient workflow 📑.
• Enhances productivity by allowing real-time component updates across platforms 🔄.
• Workspaces help organize projects, manage tasks, and streamline work processes 📂.
• Includes interactive demo of Loop in action, showcasing practical use cases and integrations 🎥.

Overview

Microsoft Loop is revolutionizing the way teams collaborate by offering a flexible, interactive workspace. In this video, the Loop team provides insights into how Loop seamlessly integrates into tools like Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and more, promising an efficient work experience across various platforms. From setting up workspaces to using components, Loop is designed to streamline your workflow and enhance collaboration.

The Loop team demonstrates how to create a Loop workspace, showcasing its capabilities in organizing project information and making teamwork more efficient. By integrating with popular tools such as Jira, Trello, and Figma, Loop brings all your essential documents and communications into one cohesive space, making project management a breeze.

Packed with features like collaborative meeting notes, voting tables, and support for popular software integrations, Microsoft Loop is poised to tackle modern workplace challenges. Teams can enjoy a dynamic workspace that facilitates sharing, editing, and organizing content, all while keeping everything synchronized across platforms. Loop ensures that everyone stays on the same page, making it an essential tool for contemporary collaborative projects.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Overview of Microsoft Loop In the introduction and overview of Microsoft Loop, team members Rebecca and Tamini aim to address common questions about Loop's functionality and integration. The chapter promises to provide a live demonstration and cover topics such as what Loop is and how it works within Teams and Outlook.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Example Setup of a Loop Workspace This chapter discusses how to set up a loop workspace and enhance its functionality with integrations such as Jira, Trello, and Figma. The chapter also highlights research from Microsoft on global work trends, emphasizing the inefficiencies of meetings. It mentions that over 50% of employees find brainstorming in meetings challenging, struggle to catch up if they join late, and have difficulty summarizing the discussions.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Loop Components and Workspaces Explained The chapter introduces Loop as a flexible canvas with portable components designed to aid teams in collaboration, planning, and creation. It highlights the potential of integrating AI with Loop to resolve issues that arise after meetings when next steps are unclear. Loop is presented as a new document format that allows for collaborative experiences by assembling various components to facilitate work, noting its two key parts.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Live Demo: Using Loop for Project Planning The chapter titled 'Live Demo: Using Loop for Project Planning' discusses the integration of Loop components and workspaces into existing applications like Teams, Outlook, Whiteboard, OneNote, and Word. These components remain live and synchronized no matter where they are accessed, allowing teams to collaborate effectively within the applications they already use. The chapter also explains the concept of Loop workspaces, which provide a dedicated space for teams to complete project work and gather essential links, facilitating a more organized and efficient project planning process.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Creating and Organizing a Loop Workspace The chapter titled 'Creating and Organizing a Loop Workspace' explores how Loop assists teams in sharing knowledge, organizing meeting notes, managing projects, and brainstorming collaboratively. The chapter includes a live demonstration featuring an example project focused on a marketing team preparing for a new sneaker line launch in New York.
• 05:00 - 06:30: Using Advanced Features in Loop The chapter discusses how to use advanced features of the Loop component to plan and set a launch date for sneakers. Instead of traditional chat discussions, the narrator demonstrates using a Loop component to list potential dates, their pros and cons, and to facilitate a voting process. This method allows for a more efficient and organized decision-making process with the team.
• 07:30 - 09:00: Sharing and Collaboration with Loop The chapter titled 'Sharing and Collaboration with Loop' focuses on the integration of Loop in Teams for effective meeting management. It describes the process of setting up a recurring Teams meeting, adding Loop collaborative meeting notes, and pre-filling the agenda. This ensures all participants receive the necessary information and can contribute their own agenda topics before and during the meeting.
• 09:00 - 09:30: Conclusion and Further Learning In the 'Conclusion and Further Learning' chapter, the focus is on efficiently managing and collaborating on meeting notes through Teams. Participants are able to view and edit notes collaboratively, aided by Co-Pilot, which can also take automated notes. As the meeting wraps up, tasks can be assigned to colleagues with the option to manage them in Planner and To-Do. With the kickoff meeting completed, participants are now tasked with preparing for a launch, requiring ongoing documentation, communication, and content management across multiple platforms.

Almost everything you need to know to start with Microsoft Loop Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hi thanks so much for tuning in I'm Rebecca from the loop team hi I'm tamini also from the loop team we've gotten a lot of questions on the team about how Loop works and how people can use it in their own work so in this video we want to spend time answering some of those questions and doing a live demo of Loop in action some of the things you can expect to learn here are what loop is and how it works in teams and Outlook an
• 00:30 - 01:00 example setup of a loop workspace and then how to take things further with Integrations across your favorite tools like jira Trello and figma each Che at Microsoft we gather data on work Trends across the world and one of the things that we know is that meetings are inefficient in fact the data shows that over 50% of employees say it's difficult to brainstorm in a meeting it's difficult to catch up if they join a meeting late it's hard to summarize what
• 01:00 - 01:30 has happened and at the end of the meeting the next steps are unclear on the loop team we think that Loop and AI can help solve some of these problems Loop is a flexible canvas with portable components that's aimed at helping teams think plan and create together you can think of this flexible canvas as a new document format and it's aimed at having collaboration and AI built into the experience it allows you to assemble different pieces together to get your work done and loop has two key Parts
• 01:30 - 02:00 components and workspaces loop components bring this collaborative canvas inside your existing apps like teams Outlook whiteboard OneNote and word they stay live and in sync no matter where they live so you and your team can get things done in the apps that you're already in Loop workspaces are the second part and we think of workspaces as a space for you and your team to get Project work done within a workspace you can gather important links
• 02:00 - 02:30 documents and Pages for your project and invite your teammates some of the things that Loop works well for is helping team share knowledge organize meeting notes manage projects brainstorm together and more and all of this comes together in the loop app which we're really excited to show you in a live demo next to show you how Loop works tamin and I are going to show an example project to bring it to life in this case Let's Pretend We're on a distributed marketing team prepping for the launch of a new sneaker Line in New York we're a small brand but we have
• 02:30 - 03:00 a loyal following and we know from past experience that people will be lining up to get these sneakers as we're planning we need to set a date for the launch I could go back and forth with the team in chat about pros and cons of different dates but instead I'll use a loop component I can add some ideas along with pros and cons vote on my preferred date and send it to the team I just received the loop component voting table from Rebecca I can add my pros and cons as well as votes directly
• 03:00 - 03:30 from teams chat now that the launch date is decided I will kick off our planning meeting by setting up a reoccurring teams meeting inside the teams meeting invite I'm able to add a loop collaborative meeting notes and pre-fill out the agenda before sharing it with others this will automatically be sent to all the participants along with the meeting invite so they can add their own agenda topics during during the call all
• 03:30 - 04:00 meeting participants will be able to view and edit the meeting notes together directly from teams additionally co-pilot can take notes for us as we wrap up this meeting I can assign tasks to my colleagues and you can open it in planner and to do now that we've had our kickoff meeting we have our work cut out for us prepping for the launch as we continue working we'll have more documents chats meetings and content spread all over the
• 04:00 - 04:30 place and this can get overwhelming but we can use a loop workspace to better organize our project and make progress with less overwhelm let's try it out from the meeting chat I'll click on this option that says open in Loop workspace from there you can see that Loop automatically names the workspace and invites the people who were in the meeting and if there were guests in that meeting they'll be invited as well they don't even have to be people within your company from there when I click next you can see that any content that was shared
• 04:30 - 05:00 in the meeting is automatically pulled into the workspace I can choose Loop components Word documents or anything else that was shared in the meeting and it will automatically be pulled into my workspace from there I'll just go ahead and create the workspace and we're ready to get started now that we've created our workspace let's add an overview page to show who's working on the sneaker drop and what it's all about to insert new content on my page I'll type the forward slash from here I can see a bunch of different building blocks that I can add to my page this is a really
• 05:00 - 05:30 great way to familiarize yourself with some of the things that Loop can do the slash menu has simple things like tables checklists bullet lists different types of text formatting options and headers and templates that turn into something more advanced like a task list that syncs with Microsoft planner a voting table or even a Q&A session you can also find different Integrations with products that you already use like GitHub planner jira and Trello for our marketing team I'll add a short video
• 05:30 - 06:00 explaining exactly what the sneaker drop is about hey y'all thanks so much for joining um here's what we're working on for the project and we're so excited for you to be on the team uh thank you so much Loop is also built to feel like a physical space for your team to work in the digital world to make the workspace feel fun and welcoming for the crew I might add a boost to the page too here
• 06:00 - 06:30 we have our launch plan and you can see that our team has broken it out into different phases I'm personally super excited about this so I'm going to share my excitement with the team with a little congratulatory boost maybe I'll do the party great work team and finally I'll paste a figma link that shows our launch site designs you can see when I paste it it embeds right on the page so our team can get a quick view of the launch site plans now let's
• 06:30 - 07:00 fast forward about a week in time our team has been working away to get ready for the sneaker drop and loop has helped us stay in syn across time zones make decisions faster stay organized and more let's have a look at our launch plan I've created this table to keep track of all the phases of our launch plan so we can then share it with our leadership team this table can be converted into board view to be more easily digestible so you can group it by phase or the status of each work item you can then
• 07:00 - 07:30 drag and drop each item across the columns as the work is completed the ability to switch between board View and tables is extremely powerful for different scenarios you can use it for any table that has preset column types as labels including custom labels I need to share the launch plan with additional stakeholders so I can share this Loop page as a loop component by copying and pting pasting it into
• 07:30 - 08:00 Outlook alternatively if I want to only share the board without sharing the rest of the page I can turn the board itself into its own component by first clicking on the menu next to it selecting create a component then I can do the same action of copying the component I'll go to my Outlook and paste this component into the email message it will render embedded in the
• 08:00 - 08:30 email message itself and be live for everyone to edit directly from Outlook so stakeholders won't need to switch between apps to open it the full context is already in the email message itself and is super easy to edit so that's almost everything you need to know to get started with Loop but if you want to learn more tune in to our future learning sessions with teammates to learn things like co-pilot and loop and more don't forget to try out Loop today and follow us on social media on
• 08:30 - 09:00 LinkedIn and X for product updates and tips and tricks thanks so much for watching [Music]